The Valley :: Andes Ecuador The Awakening Valley Papers

The Valley - Awake In 1946, John Collier, jr. and Anbal Buitrn wrote The Awakening Valley, telling the story of a social miracle misadventure in Ecuador - in the valley at the foot of Tiata Imbabura. (1, cover) In 1993, 43 years later, I set foot in that same expanse and discovered a valley, not awakening, but awake My son, Matt, and I were locomotion by bus, north out of Quito, on our way to Colombia. (4) We had been advised to be in Otavalo on a week check to experience the famous market. midget did we know that this trip would evolve into many more trips and to special relationships with the slew living in this valley, high in the Andes. Ecuador, among the smallest and most unspoiled of southernmost American nations, owes its name to its geographic location - astride the equator. (6, p. 59) The Andes divide into ii parallel chains in Ecuador - the western and the eastern, which run like opposite number spinal columns from north to south. The valley in which most Ecuadorians live, and where most of the climb areas agricultural produce is grown, runs for about four hundred kilometers in between. several(prenominal) thirty volcanoes serve to fence in the valley from either side. The late river valleys (hoyas) are home to agricultural communities whose way of life seems to have remained unvaried for centuries. (6, p. 64) A book written by Linda A. Newsom, Life and Death in Early Colonial Ecuador, and reviewed by Mary A. Y. Gallagher, (2) begins with a study at or just before the point when the Ecuadorian sierra began to be incorporated into the Inca Empire (ca. 1460). She describes in great detail what can be inferred about the preconquest commonwealth of Ecuadors regions sierra, coast and Oriente. She then describes the disastrous disturb of Inca penetration and partial conquest of Ecuador, and of the prolonged wars still being fought in that respect when Spanish brought Ecuadors first colonial period to an abrupt en d and began a new series of invasions which subdued and reduced the indigenous population over a number of years. This history, laced with the invasion of the Incas and the Spanish had a great impact on this small country.